ACORDE: Current Status

This is a summary of what have happened in EHUspace's ACORDE programme from its beginning up to now:

October 2015: the start of everything. One afternoon, while brainstorming for possible payloads and interesting experiments to be embarked on REXUS/BEXUS programme, Ivan came up with a great idea: home-made cosmic ray detectors. Brilliant!

November 2015: After a couple of lines of estimation and calculations, the idea was developed and the application form sent to the ESA REXUS/BEXUS programme organisation. Two weeks later, we received a highly motivating e-mail: we were pre-selected!

December 2015: Selection Workshop at ESTEC (the Netherlands). Some of our team-members went to Nordwiijk to present and defend the feasibility of ACORDE amongst other experiments coming from other Universities across Europe.

18 December 2015: We were officially told by the ESA that our project was selected to fly on the REXUS/BEXUS Cycle 09. Fantastic news to start Christmas Holiday and a great load of work for the forthcoming months.

January 2016: First month of actual technical work and developments for the project. Some testing of the experiment's basic principles and setting up the project management and team organisation.

February 2016: PDR at Kiruna. A trip to Sweden for the first technical review of the project and some training at the Esrange Facilities in Kiruna (Sweden). Review was succesful and the panel gave ACORDE a ""CDR Pass"".

March 2016: More technical work on the experiment. CAD models, structure analysis, seek for materials and manufacturing methods. Review product specifications, funding and sponshorship seeking, and on the top of all that, DOCUMENTATION: the SED (Student's Experiment Document), our new best friend for the previous and next months.

May 2016: CDR at ESTEC. The Critical Design Review. An extremely important mile-stone within our project timeline. Many hours were spent in front of the computer screen and at the workshop in order to shape correctly all the open issues of our experiment.

June 2016: ""CDR Pass!""

What comes Now:

More serious work

Intensive testing campaign of our experiment during this summer

Welcome REXUS/BEXUS panel members for a site-visit at our home, the University of the Basque Country at Bilbao